Stories from Nature magazine, August 2013 issues

5 stories, all flash fiction length, all online. Only one that somewhat held my interest was Hecht's.

List below is in order of my preference, best first. Links on author fetch more fiction by author.

1. 29 August: Jeff Hecht's "The speed of dark energy" (B); download: A physicist has discovered that dark energy moves faster than light. And landed a job that promises faster execution of automated trades in the stock market. Only there is a minor glitch about its practicality...
2. 22 August: Marko Jankovic's "Alone" (B); download: Having perfected a robot that thinks it is human, the CEO of the company making it is getting the feeling he's the only human among his automaton-like colleagues.
3. 8 August: Milo James Fowler's "One meal a day" (B); download: There's a bit of "To Serve Man" (download as part of a larger package) here, though the story had a far lesser impact than that classic.
   
   A shapeshifting alien is on earth, looking for another of his species - a run away price who's believed to be hiding here.
4. 15 August: Grace Tang's "Time heals all wounds" (C); download: A man experiencing hallucinations is given a new brain surgery that results in an unexpected side effect - time seriously slows down for the patient whenever he is experiencing great emotion!
5. 1 August: Lee Hallison's "The best of us" (C); download: Human scavengers are hunting for usable stuff over an earth gone dead & dangerous, & with most people recently dead. No cause is given for the apocalypse; story appears to be about the toughness & human emotions among the survivors. 

Related: Stories from Nature magazine.

Stories from "Nature" magazine, July 2012 issues

Four flash fiction pieces, all online.

I liked only one from this lot - "White lies". List below is in order of my preference, best first.

1. 19 July: Grace Tang's "White lies" (B); download: Someone has perfected the technology to plant arbitrary memories in the heads of people...
2. 5 July: Jeff Hecht's "Waiting for Chronomatic" (B); download; satire: Frustrating experience connecting to someone in a company who can help solve a malfunctioning gadget problem.
3. 12 July: Michael Haynes' "An unsuitable job for a human" (B); download: There is a well known US female pilot named Amelia Earhart, who, along with her navigator, vanished with her plane over the Pacific in 1937. This story tells us what really happened to the duo...
4. 26 July: David Carr's "Lifeboat" (B); download: A geneticist aboard a ship that has been in the seas for years has been experimentally engineering children by mating human genes with ... what - some animal? Story is told from the point of view of these "monster" children...

Related: Stories from Nature. 

Jeff Hecht's "The Neanderthal Correlation" (flash fiction, human evolution): Some truths we probably don't want to know!

A researcher is fooling around with genome data of humans & Neanderthals. She finds evidence of their interbreeding during a certain period. So she goes looking for traits humans have acquired as part of this interbreeding.

What she finds is that only a human subpopulation seems to have inherited the essentially-Neanderthal traits. And they are - "advanced mathematics skills, information processing, logic, analytical intelligence, concentration skills, obsession-compulsion & Asperger's syndrome"!

Key things that Cro-Magnons had & Neanderthals didn't were "genes linked to successful socialization & management skills."

And she's found that human genes have been asserting themselves over these acquired one! We as species are slowly but surely losing mathematical & logical reasoning, & such!

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 22 May 2008.
Rating: B.